The Leon and Norma Hess Center for Science and Medicine

Departments and Institutes

The Leon and Norma Hess Center for Science and Medicine houses both clinical services and research facilities for some of the Mount Sinai Health System's most renowned Departments and Institutes. This spacious, state-of-the-art Center brings physicians, investigators, and specialists from a spectrum of disciplines together in the tireless pursuit of cutting-edge science and innovative medicine.

"The Leon and Norma Hess Center for Science and Medicine underscores the Mount Sinai Health System’s ongoing commitment to bringing critical therapies from bench to bedside." – Kenneth L. Davis, MD, President and CEO, the Mount Sinai Health System

"The Cardiovascular Research Institute serves as a destination for an extraordinary group of world-renowned scientists and clinicians who are fundamentally changing how we think about heart disease," says Roger J. Hajjar, MD, Director of the Institute.

Dedicated to eradicating the spread of cardiovascular disease, our Cardiovascular Research Institute is the living representation of our century-old commitment to excellence in patient care, education, and medical science. “Our research and clinical paradigms are laying the foundation for novel therapies based on basic science, and used to combat cardiovascular diseases," says Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, Director of Mount Sinai Heart. The Institute's customized research space in the Center for Science and Medicine supports this paradigm, advancing the work of investigators striving to expand human knowledge of cardiovascular pathology. The rapid translation of innovative research concepts into prevention, diagnosis, and therapy means that patients of all ages struggling with cardiovascular diseases can look forward to multidisciplinary treatments of unprecedented quality.

Dedicated to improving the lives of infants, children, and adolescents, The Mindich Child Health and Development Institute fosters an intellectually rich and supportive environment for collaborative scientific investigation.

"Children have unique vulnerabilities with no counterpart in adult life, and their biology and vulnerability to illness evolve as they mature from infancy to adolescence," says Bruce D. Gelb, MD, Gogel Family Chair and Director. The Institute explores that unique biology by integrating the latest technologies with a modern research layout. We are developing innovative paradigms to better understand the effects of genetics and environment on child health, and to bring greater personalization to pediatric medicine. With the Mount Sinai Health System’s vast resources, our Institute is among the world's leading centers of children's health research.

The Mount Sinai Health System has been recognized as a leader in brain and spinal cord research and treatment for over a century. That long-standing reputation continues with The Friedman Brain Institute, and its two floors of fully-equipped lab space in the Hess Center. "What we have built here is no less than the best neuroscience research institute in the world," says Eric J. Nestler, MD, PhD, Director of the Friedman Brain Institute and the Nash Family Professor of Neuroscience.

Designed to facilitate breakthrough research, the Hess Center space supports investigators pursuing their best and biggest ideas. Scientists from different disciplines have the resources they need to explore revolutionary advances, giving patients with nervous system disorders hope for a better life. "Soon—I have no doubt—we will develop tests that will allow us to distinguish between many diseases and their subtypes and to build on those discoveries with the development of new treatments," says Dr. Nestler. "That's when the era of truly personalized medicine will begin for neuroscience, and The Friedman Brain Institute is uniquely equipped to get us there."

As the hub of genomics research at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology promises to be at the forefront of the revolution in genetics and genomic sciences, which is fundamentally changing the practice of medicine. "You can imagine back in the day of Louis Pasteur, when the microscope came to be, it opened up a whole new world of investigation and exploration for understanding living systems," says Eric Schadt, PhD, Director of the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology, Chair of the Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences, and the Jean C. and James W. Crystal Professor of Genomics. "That's sort of what we have in these new technologies." Multiscale biology is a departure from the prevailing model for exploring the human system, and Dr. Schadt's, global perspective on understanding biology is nothing short of a paradigm shift in the scientific world. Located in the Hess Center, our Institute’s large-scale generation and integration of multiple sources of biological data, combined with clinical information, is expanding our ability to characterize disease and improve patient diagnoses and treatments.

The Mount Sinai Health System continues to make critically important contributions to the understanding and treatment of cancers, as it has for over a century. "Now we are developing more targeted, effective treatments and, ultimately, prevention strategies," says Steven J. Burakoff, MD, Director of the Tisch Cancer Institute and Professor of Medicine and Oncological Sciences. "This requires the thinking of investigators from many different and sometimes unexpected disciplines." With over 40 percent of the Hess Center for Science and Medicine devoted to cancer—including two floors of dedicated cancer laboratory research space as well as two floors of dedicated clinical space—investigators work tirelessly to ever expand on our research.

The Tisch Cancer Institute's outpatient facility, the Ruttenberg Treatment Center, expanded to double its size when it relocated to the Hess Center. "I believe in a large matrix organization that reaches out to all the best minds and ideas," says Dr. Burakoff. "The infrastructure and architecture of the Tisch Cancer Institute brings together the best in cancer care and research, greatly increasing the potential for major discoveries."

Biomedical imaging in the twenty-first century offers unparalleled opportunities to transform clinical medicine, and the Translational and Molecular Imaging Institute is advancing that transformation by serving as a research catalyst for a new generation of imaging methodologies. "We are among only a handful of institutes in the world to have a 7 Tesla MRI and combine a MRI and PET in a single machine…both will lead to earlier detection of disease and also more targeted treatments," says Zahi A. Fayad, PhD, Director of the Translational and Molecular Imaging Institute.

With its expansion to a state-of-the-art space in the Hess Center for Science and Medicine, the Institute is positioned to take visualization technology to new levels, inventing and applying methodologies that will enable breakthroughs across Mount Sinai's other disciplines. The Institute supports collaborative opportunities by providing researchers and clinicians from our various institutes greater and more comprehensive access to complex imaging expertise and equipment—including emerging modalities like bioluminescent and fluorescent imaging—dramatically increasing the potential for making major discoveries at Mount Sinai.”